SSV Gettysburg
by Shidract
Summary: Something totally random, with OC characters, going in an unknown direction, which isn't even known to the author herself...
1. Engineering Deck

_So, I've had Mass Effect 2 for, oh, a few weeks, and finished it within a week or so. I've never played Mass Effect 1, but I'm totally in love with ME2 (and will play the first one sometime soon now). So I thought I'd write a little in the ME universe, just for the heck of it. With only a few weeks ME knowledge, gleamed from the game and the wonderful ME Wiki. For that reason, please don't murder me for any in accuracies (I know some things I've made up, purely because I haven't seen the facts written anywhere). That's the main reason this is pretty much all with OCs, because I don't want to wind up killing all the main game characters with my terrible writing of them. So the main characters is just a 'lowly' crippled turian engineer, with side characters in the form of crew members._

_So yes, the _SSV Gettysburg _welcomes you aboard._

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_It's the year 2194CE, mankind extended their presence beyond the confines of their single solar system almost fifty years ago, and found they were not as alone as it had first been conceived. The System Alliance represents Earth among other alien species, ranging from the warring krogan, to the military orientated turians in the Citadel Council. To maintain peace between the various species, the Alliance has a small fleet of frigates, capable of traversing the galaxy by the means of mass relays, which are able to propel ships from one universe to another in mere seconds. These frigates are made up a range of crewmembers from all aspects of the Council, and their main aim is to patrol the known, removing hostiles and threats from other occupiers of the galaxy, such as the geth and reapers. The _SSV Gettysburg_, one of these updated frigates, recently acquired a number of fresh crewmembers in anticipation of her new mission to explore the darker, untouched, reaches of space, and is on her way to the mass relay, located in the gateway system, Sahrabarik, in order to take a leap into the unknown._

_Omega Nebula, Amada System, _SSV Gettysburg_, Engineering Deck, 0613 hours_

"For the last time, _no_! I've told you time and time again that we cannot possibly to 'tweak' the thrusters anymore than we already have," a rather frustrated and irritated voice cut through the constant and level droning hum that filled the lower deck of the starship currently cruising through the Amada system of the Omega Nebula, "If we decided to go with your idea, we'd risk the ship exploding next time we use a mass relay to jump anywhere, which will be occurring in about forty-five minutes. I don't want to only have forty-five minutes more to live. That is why _I'm_ the chief engineer of this vessel and you are not. Do not even think about touching anything, I know what you're like," it added.

There was a quiet hissing sound of an airtight door unlocking and sliding open, before the owner of the voice, a middle-aged man, hair already thinning and receding on the top of his head, stalked out from the main section that housed the ships core. A quick glance over his shoulder told him the person he'd been shouting down hadn't made an appearance behind him immediately to stop him, he headed straight to the lift in the middle of the deck and came to a halt in front of it in order to wait.

"I'm sorry Tyros, but I've had enough of you trying to overrule me. I'm fed up of a turian who thinks he knows everything about the ship I've been on for years telling me what to do. I have to tell Captain Harding," he shot in the direction of the door he'd just emerged from.

But still, no one emerged, causing the man to frown. He knew that despite being a turian, the engineer wasn't the quickest on his feet, but he would have expected him to have at least attempted to limp after him, begging for him to just give him one more chance.

As the lift arrived, the man glancing at it as the doors slid open to reveal an empty space, he suddenly thought better of what he'd been about to do, and quickly turned away from the lift, hurrying back to the ships core housing and through the door he'd stormed out of only moments before.

"Tyros! I knew it!" he snapped, barely taking one step through the door before coming to a halt, almost resulting on the door automatically shutting on him.

Standing awkwardly at a holographic terminal set into one wall, the turian engineer was hunched over it, the bulky garb that turians felt obliged to wear over their rather hardened and plated forms only serving to emphasise how uncomfortable he looked as he tapped away at the flickering yellow commands before him with two digits of both three fingered hands. He only paused in what he was doing to glance over his shoulder, the crimson tattoos flowing over the unusual metallic and bone-like structured face only serving to enhance the rather small, yet still already piercingly bright blue eyes.

He then looked back to what he was doing, ignoring the human behind him.

"Get away from the console Tyros, you'll be the death of us all, and you'll destroy the ship!" the man snapped, "For the love of God, just do what I say!"

"Not this time Lucas," the turian didn't look at him when he spoke, his voice steady, deep and deliberate, but with a spark of life, a subtle hint of flanging giving a range to its depth, "This time I'll show you that I do know what I'm doing."

"Turians have no idea what they're doing when it comes to the running of a ship! I don't know why Harding let you on his ship. All you are good for is anything militaristic! I'm going to have to complain about this. It's one thing this ship having a multi-species crew, I might even have coped with a turian in engineering, since they have shown _some_ competence. But what is the Alliance thinking sending me you?" he exclaimed, throwing up his hands in exasperation, "I get a crippled Ceryk Tyros, a tinkering turian, who just so happens to be the son of the infamous Jaxis."

"It's clear Lucas, that you still resent the turian people for the First Contact War. But I would have thought, with humans ability to adapt, that you would be able to put it behind you and accept what the Alliance does," Ceryk finally looked at him once again, "And I'd appreciate you not bringing my father's rash behaviour during that conflict, nor my state of health, into this matter. Though, you do recognise I 'tinker', which generally indicates an understanding of both combat and technology."

"Understand technology does not make you an engineer! There is a clear division between the two. One which you obviously cannot see! Which is probably where you went wrong," Lucas indicated the stiffer of Ceryk's legs, which seemed to be the reason he couldn't stand particularly successfully.

Ceryk didn't rise to the bait and just looked back to the holographic screen, tapping at it a few more times before he eventually just shrugged, "Well, you can run to Harding and tell him that I'm such a terrible member of this crew, or you could let him know that by correcting a simple error in your mathematics, I've managed to up the power output to the thrusters a little, so much so that it could cut up to ten minutes off all travel times."

"What?" Lucas stared at the back of the turians plated head, "What do you mean 'simple error'?"

"Your calculations were out," Ceryk cast another glance over his shoulder, "An easy mistake to make. If you were ten years old."

"What?" he repeated again before storming over to the console, his face turning an impressive shade of 'furious embarrassment'.

Ceryk was more than happy to step to one side to allow him access to the information, though his simple step required rather a lot of effort in order to shift his stiff limb, which didn't appear to bend quite right at the knee.

Lucas quickly leant over the console, his eyes scanning the data at an impressive rate, and more than once he had to flick a finger at the hologram in order to scroll down through the information, then back up, just to check he was seeing things correctly.

When Lucas still hadn't said anything, Ceryk ran a hand over the fringes of bony armour that shaped his features then protruded out the back of his head, though when his fingers found a broken edge of one on the right side of his face, he let his hand drop quickly back to his side.

Eventually the chief engineer did step away from the console, stared at it a little longer, before looking to Ceryk, "You shift's over. Go back to your quarters and get Qar, then get some rest."

Ceryk looked less than surprised, "What about Harding?"

"I'll talk to him later," Lucas grunted, "On your way."

"Sir," Ceryk decided to just incline his head in a vague, yet rather mocking, show of respect, before turning away and beginning to make his way out of the core housing and to the lift. To help himself along, he wrapped his fingers around a loose fold of uniform material around the thigh of his damaged leg, and used it to help move his leg back and forth.

A passer-by needn't see Ceryk moving to necessarily know that he seemed to have suffered a rather dire injury that now affected his day to day activities, because as he walked away from Lucas awkwardly, the chief engineer couldn't help but eye up the clearly missing spur that protruded from the back of the turian's right knee.

Once out of the core housing, the door sliding shut behind him quickly, symbolically shutting him off from his duties, Ceryk, as usual, let his professional façade slip a little. He reached down and rubbed his knee under the uniform, before altering the way he was walking yet again, moving a little quicker now that he wasn't playing up his injury.

Yes, it caused him problems. Yes, it caused him pain from time to time. But while he couldn't bend his knee successfully, during the seven or so years that had passed since he'd sustained it, he'd learnt the easiest way to move, albeit it less than gracefully. He'd also learnt that by overplaying his difficulty walking, he could also get out of a good deal of duties on the _Gettysburg_ he'd only just managed to be accepted onto. Generally it was only his superiors (namely Lucas, since the captain wasn't a complete idiot) that he misled, since it wasn't exactly comfortable to keep up the exaggerated limp when in his rather cramped cabin he shared with a human and an asari, let alone the whole ship.

Ah, his roommates.

The human male Ceryk got along with fairly well, considering how humans tended to be apprehensive towards turians. They often passed time in the cabin drinking (not the same drinks however, since human alcohol had a record for killing turians) or partaking in petty gambling. Though most of the time the human was at his station at the helm, making sure the ship didn't wander from her course.

But the asari… He couldn't quite understand her purpose on the ship. She had most of the male members of the crew tripping over their own feet when she passed them in the narrow corridors, but she seemed to have a rather vicious personality that she directed purely towards Ceryk, and Ceryk alone. He would have put it down to her disliking his species, but the two other turians onboard were treated perfectly fine, just like any other member of the crew. Though, come to think of it, the asari was a biotic, and Ceryk had on occasion voiced his dislike for those with biotic abilities. Perhaps she had just taken his comments to heart.

Lost in his thoughts, he'd almost completely been obvious to the lift having arrived, the door open and waiting for him to enter. Shaking his head quickly to quell his musing, he stepped into the lift and hit a button on the holopad on the lifts back wall, before leaning back beside it to wait out the irritatingly long time it took for the lift to move up a single deck to the crews' quarters.


	2. Crew Quarters Deck

_Authors note: I mention Palaven having a longer day than the standard 24 hours, but I have no idea how long it really is. All I know is that the general planets capable of sustaining life in the ME universe have approximately the same rotation/orbit as Earth, hence why they have life etc etc. But just for the heck of it, I 'made up' Palaven having a longer day. Slap me if you know better :P_

_Omega Nebula, Amada System, _SSV Gettysburg_, Crew Quarters Deck, 0635 hours_

By the time the lift finally came to a halt and the doors opened once again, Ceryk had lost himself once again in the thoughts that often whirled around his head in no particular order. It was only when a couple of human crew members, obviously heading off to their stations to begin the early morning shift, entered the lift and waited for him expectantly to move, that he snapped out of his daydream, grunted a thank you for holding the lift, and quickly limped out into the corridor.

There was only one human milling around rather absently that he could see, because few crewmembers worked in the early hours of the morning when the ship generally suffered a lull in activity, but also mainly due to the fact the ship only had a crew of about thirty, many of the jobs that had once required attention being covered by an advanced ship AI that had been first tested, then altered to be unique for each vessel, from a few years ago on the _SSV Normandy_.

Hence why it had been so hard to find a position on a human-run starship, especially when the turians only having places for their injured military personnel behind a desk, pushing paper, and humans were still apprehensive of their species. Ceryk wasn't ready for a life sitting down doing little. Losing the ability to run didn't affect his capacity to fire a weapon accurately. Not that he'd be firing many guns working as a ships engineer. Nor did anyone know that he was able with weaponry. But he'd reasoned it was better than being stuck on a planet, space station, or at the Citadel.

He acknowledged the human briefly as they passed each other, before heading for the cabin at the furthest end of the corridor where the other engineering officer resided in order to make sure that he was up and ready to go down and baby-sit the supposedly able Lucas.

On reaching the cabin, Ceryk rapped his knuckles on the door, though didn't have long for it to slid open.

Yet another human appeared in the doorway, looking rather tired, hair tousled and sticking out all over the place, "Oh, Ceryk, hey. Qar's just coming, you know how long he usually takes. I would have thought living in a suit like the quarians do that he wouldn't need to spend so long getting ready."

Ceryk offered him a smile as he put a hand on the doorframe and leant against it, "I agree. I didn't wake you did I, Jake?"

"You did, but it doesn't matter," he waved a hand around dismissively, "Harding wanted to talk to the _Gettysburg_'s marine squad at seven, so it's handy that you woke me. I know the captain's pretty forgiving, but I really don't want to have to tell him I didn't appear because I overslept."

"That's ok then," Ceryk nodded, glancing past the human briefly as he spotted Qar behind him, the quarian fiddling with a fastening on his airtight suit.

"I'm just coming, Ceyrk," Qar muttered, an accent, which almost resembled that of a human from the Middle East, clear in his voice, as he continued to adjust something, occasionally looking around him, the soft blue light from the visor of his helmet being cast about him as he did so.

"Don't worry, you're already late, and Lucas isn't in the best of moods," Ceryk gave a light shrug.

"Oh no, what did you did you do this time?" Qar paused in what he was doing to look at the turian, and while it was impossible to see his facial features through the helmet all quarians wore, the concern in his voice was all too clear.

"I fixed something, for a change," Ceryk rolled his eyes.

"That always puts him in a fantastic mood," Qar muttered sarcastically, squeezing past Jake in the doorway and out into the corridor, "Why do I always have to have a shift after you? You have a talent for irritating him."

Again, Ceryk rolled his eyes, "You're the only other engineer on this ship, you can only be after me. I'm sorry, but if Lucas can't take being corrected, then… Well, he shouldn't be the chief engineer anyway. He clearly knows very little about the drive systems of this ship."

"He knows you want to replace him, so I'd watch what you say," Qar warned him, "Word tend to travel surprisingly well on the _Gettysburg_."

"Gossip ship, that's what she is," Jake grinned at them, before stepping back into the room, "See you two later."

"Jake," both Ceryk and Qar nodded as the door slid shut, leaving them alone in the corridor. Qar then began to make his way to the lift, while Ceryk did his best to keep up, following alongside him.

"I don't think I could turn him against me anymore," Ceryk carried on as they walked, "You know he's too far gone when he's looking back at the past and the conflict between humans and turians."

"Oh, not that again," Qar sighed, "Last time he brought that up with you, he went on about it to me through my whole six hour shift," he came to a halt on reaching the lift, which was already waiting on the deck.

"Sorry," Ceryk offered him an apologetic smile, "I'll try and refrain from coming across as a know-it-all next time."

"I don't think that's possible for you," Qar commented lightly as the lift doors opened and he stepped into it smartly, "I'll see you later in the mess."

"I think a good luck is in order?" Ceryk suggested.

"I think so too," Qar gave a little laugh and tapped a holographic button, causing the lift doors to slide shut.

Alone in the corridor now, Ceryk glanced down it in the direction of his cabin. He'd been told to rest, since he'd been up all night, however he felt far from tired. The humans kept their ships running to the twenty-four hour period, the galactic standard time, however as a turian, born and raised on the home world, Palaven, Ceryk was far more used to a slightly longer day and was capable to working longer than humans without tiring as quickly. Apparently he still hadn't quite adjusted to the generic twenty-four hour day.

Instead of retiring to his cabin, he waited for the lift to deliver Qar to the engineering deck before returning to the crew quarters' deck, when he quickly got into it, heading up to the command deck.


End file.
